Or rather, it’s very bad. The news stories of Amazon.com exploiting its warehouse workers started to catch my attention in 2018. The news wasn’t new, but I’d chosen to ignore it because I loved getting almost anything I wanted so easily. But in 2018 I decided I’d been spending too much on things I didn’t really need and this motivated me to pay attention to those stories. No, I can’t pretend to have grown a conscience. It just finally became convenient for me to cancel my Amazon Prime membership.
I’ve been proud to spend less in 2018 on Amazon.com, mostly because shipping costs more without Amazon Prime. But I’ve been reading news stories about their workers being ordered to immediately go back to work minutes after a colleague collapsed on the job, former Amazon.com employees whose bodies are so damaged from their Amazon.com jobs that they can’t work at all and an inside view of a warehouse that includes the detail that workers have to hold their bladders to make packing quota (inhuman).
I can’t bear the idea that someone’s repetitive motion injury might be worsened because I didn’t want to leave my apartment to buy a measuring cup. I’m haunted by the vision of someone throwing out her back from lifting my order of welcome mats and ground flaxseeds. So I’ve deleted the Amazon Prime app from my phone and my Amazon.com shortcuts and bookmarks from all my devices. I’ve replaced those bookmarks with ones for Etsy and eBay because I don’t need so many brand new items and if they’re handmade or vintage, so much the better.
Maybe if I needed a medical item or health supplement immediately and couldn’t get it easily another way, I’d use Amazon.com. But I’m done scrolling through their website out of boredom, filling my cart, emptying my cart, building a big saved-for-later list, and moving items between wish lists. No more using Amazon.com packages as a way to add excitement to my days. No more making myself want things so I can have a smiling box waiting for me when I get home.
But I am a big reader. I try to get all my e-books from the library and don’t buy an e-book more often than every two or three months. But I do buy them, so I’ve downloaded the Barnes & Noble Nook app. Barnes & Noble is Amazon.com’s worthy rival, so until I hear uglier things about them than I’ve heard about A.com I’m moving my e-book business to them.
And that leaves the movies, and I can find plenty to watch on Hulu, Netflix and YouTube. Fortunately I wasn’t hooked on Amazon.com for music, services, Alexa or anything else. For me it was mainly a lot of physical item ordering.
So it’s over until Amazon.com does right by its workers, and that probably means we’re through forever. Now to post this piece on all my social media so whoever monitors mentions of Amazon.com can dispatch an Amazon FC-Ambassador to tell me their warehouses are wonderful. (That already happened with one of my tweets on this subject). Ha!
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